What would it be like to receive instant query results from Google directly from within iOS’s stock Spotlight search? A new tweak entitled SmartSearch provides a few clues as to what that might be like. It’s far from a perfect execution of the idea, but it’s an interesting idea nonetheless. Have a look at our video walkthrough, which shows SmartSearch in action.

SmartSearch performs as an add-on to the SearchLoader tweak, and can thus be enabled via the SearchLoader preferences in the stock Settings app. It’s enabled by default upon installation, so you can swipe over to Spotlight and start performing search queries as soon as you come back from respring.

Clear concise factual searches work best, such as “Who is the president?”, “What time is it?”, or “Who is the CEO of Apple?” Interestingly, I found that the search didn’t play as nice with other, seemingly similar searches. Your mileage may vary as far as the response goes. Check out the video above to see what I mean.

Even though it doesn’t work as perfectly or predictably as I would like, one must remember that SmartSearch is a free tweak add-on. For that reason, IU recommend that you venture over to Cydia’s BigBoss repo in order to check it out. What do you think?

Actually Jeff, contrary to your theory, this tweak does /not/ pull results from Google, rather it queries a service called “True Knowledge” (Or Evi, as it’s commonly know on the App Store) /and/ WolframAlpha. However it’s not as reliable, but I’m working on the queries (The results are fetched by my own server, no need to update the tweak) – Just an FYI 😛 Cheers!